This invention relates to party games, and more particularly, to electronic party games and components thereof.
Board-games, card games and other party games have provided entertainment for groups of people for many years. A number of party games require individual players to answer questions. These answers in turn entertain the group. One such game, known as Scruples (trade mark), tests individual players with moral dilemmas. A disadvantage associated with this game is that a player may lie, in answering the moral question, and often it is difficult or impossible for the other players to detect the lie.
There exist a number of lie-detector devices which have been considered to be suitable for entertainment purposes. U.S. Pat. No. 3,648,686 discloses an instrument for measuring the galvanic skin response, which utilizes a bridge amplifier and relies upon a change in the audible frequency to signal an untruth, but this device has poor resolution. U.S. Pat. No. 3,841,316 discloses an apparatus for measuring the psychogalvanic reflex, which also uses a resistance bridge circuit, but this device is not practical, since the transistor meter combination required to make the circuit practical does not exist. U.S. Pat. No. 4,331,160 discloses a lie-detector apparatus which is an improvement over that disclosed in the above patents, because it provides a constant baseline, but it also uses a resistance bridge circuit which does not create a linear output. Furthermore, these prior art devices are not very reliable lie-detectors, because they do not take into account the fact that a particular person may have a relatively high response to every question, or a relatively low response to every question, regardless of whether a person is telling the truth.
There also exist highly sophisticated polygraph machines which calculate scores corresponding to the certainty of deceit, based upon complex measurements of various factors, but these machines are very expensive, and can only be used by trained operators.
There is accordingly a need for a relatively simple, inexpensive lie-detector apparatus, adapted for use as a component of a party game.